Most buildings utilize heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to provide heating or cooling to spaces within the building. For example, many commercial buildings use HVAC systems to regulate air temperature and/or humidity so that spaces within the building will be comfortable for people working, playing, or otherwise spending time in those spaces. Some HVAC systems are designed to provide specific amounts of heating and/or cooling to equipment housed in the building. For example, HVAC systems may be used to provide cooling to computer servers and associated components housed in a datacenter or comparable facility. Such HVAC systems are typically operated so as to provide air to equipment at a temperature that is suitable for providing sufficient heat transfer between the air and the equipment to maintain the equipment within a target temperature range, regardless of the temperature of the environment outside of the building.
Generally, HVAC systems have intake and/or exhaust vents for respectively communicating air from or into the environment. For example, HVAC systems usually pull air from the environment through an intake vent and pass that air into a room (often after suitably conditioning the air such as by changing levels of heat, moisture, and/or pressure) so that heat is transferred into the air (i.e., to cool things in the room) or out of the air (i.e., to heat things in the room). Air that has undergone such heat transfer is often passed out of the room and released into the environment through an exhaust vent. The volumes of air permitted to pass through intake and/or exhaust vents accordingly can affect amounts of heating or cooling that HVAC systems can provide. As such, unintended obstruction of intake and/or exhaust vents can impair heating or cooling capacity of HVAC systems. Impaired HVAC systems may lead to unacceptable temperature and/or climate conditions within the building, which may result in harm to people or equipment in the building and/or costly suspension of normal operations to avoid such harm. For example, unintended obstruction of intake and/or exhaust vents in a datacenter could cause servers to shut down to avoid overheating, thereby negatively affecting availability of the datacenter and causing undesirable service interruptions.